Twospoons - 23-2-2005 at 13:15
Ferrofluids: A suspension of fine (~10um) magnetite particles in oil.
I started looking around the net for info on ferrofluids and found this site on making ferrofluids.
Has anyone here had experience with this stuff? I'd like to make a ferrofluid with as high a permeability as possible, to fill the airgap in a
torque motor, as this leads to greatly improved motor performance. Also want to play with the bizarre shapes these fluids form in a magnetic field!
I've also seen references to cobalt/iron compounds, but not much detail (usually in abstracts with a high price for the full text of the paper).
If anyone has any good ideas on how to produce fine magnetite or other magnetic materials, or good ideas for suitable ionic surfactants, please post!
[Edited on 23-2-2005 by Twospoons]
neutrino - 23-2-2005 at 14:17
Call me a quitter, but I think that buying the stuff would be a lot easier than actually making it. I have played around with some of what I think was
low-quality crap (don’t buy from Edmund scientific, or whatever they changed their name to). It does indeed spike in a field, as well as doing some
other interesting things. Search the web and you will find a multitude of interesting pictures.
Twospoons - 23-2-2005 at 15:50
Yes, there's plenty of sources to buy the stuff.
But making it is half the fun!